SAP SE today announced the expansion of SAP Cloud Platform, formerly known as SAP HANA Cloud Platform, with new capabilities and enhancements to provide an industry-leading platform as a service (PaaS). With a comprehensive set of new business services, SAP Cloud Platform addresses the most critical business needs by making it easy and fast to build new applications, expedite the extension and integration of SAP apps, power innovative Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, accelerate Big Data projects and enable machine learning and artificial intelligence applications.

“Since the launch of our PaaS offering three years ago, it has evolved to become the digital enterprise platform of choice that enables customers, partners and developers to build differentiating solutions that intelligently connect people, things and businesses,” said Bernd Leukert, ‎member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Products & Innovation. “To represent its breadth of capabilities, it has been rebranded as SAP Cloud Platform. This platform creates digital differentiation by connecting a rapidly growing number of smart devices and machines with people and processes to achieve superior business outcomes.”

Numerous SAP enterprise apps and over 1,000 partner apps have already been built on SAP Cloud Platform. New services are continually being added to SAP Cloud Platform providing the foundation for SAP Leonardo, SAP’s portfolio of IoT solutions that connects intelligent devices with people and processes; SAP Clea, the portfolio of machine learning solutions and services; and the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud solution portfolio, including SAP Digital Boardroom.

Customers Share the Benefits of SAP Cloud Platform
Aesculap, a division of the global operating healthcare company B. Braun Melsungen AG, focuses on products and services for core processes in surgery.

“Together with SAP we have been able to develop a tool for Aesculap that makes life easier for hospital staff,” said Martin Runkel, managing director, B. Braun IT Service GmbH. “Using SAP Cloud Platform, we developed an iOS app that simplifies management of sterile containers for surgical instruments. This enables hospitals to increase hygiene and quality of surgical instruments, especially in emerging markets, where hospitals are often not as well equipped.”

New Services That Have Been Added to SAP Cloud Platform

SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS, planned for release on March 30, aims to give developers, designers and businesses the tools and scalability they need to quickly and efficiently build powerful enterprise-grade apps for iPhone and iPad, based on SAP Cloud Platform and built in Swift, Apple’s modern programming language.

SAP Project Companion mobile app, planned for release on March 30, is a native iOS app that aims to provide integration through SAP Cloud Platform with the SAP S/4HANA Professional Services Cloud solution, taking advantage of real-time data and dramatically simplifying the experience for consultants, project managers and other users who are typically on the go.

SAP API Business Hub provides a catalog of application programming interfaces (APIs) for SAP applications. New APIs are added continuously to make it easier to build out and test new functionality and applications. Examples include new APIs for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud suite, SAP Mobile Service application and SAP Localization Hub, tax service.

SAP Cloud Platform Workflow service, general availability planned by March 30, aims to redefine enterprise business functions by quickly and easily connecting them within a graphical interface for business analysts to rapidly create new composite workflows for business processes.

SAP Cloud Platform Virtual Machine service, introduced in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region in November 2016, is planned to be available in the United States in Q1 2017. It helps customers complete their solution landscapes by adding workloads based on existing on-premise software or languages and runtimes that can now run directly on SAP Cloud Platform.

SAP Cloud Platform IoT service is now available in a beta version. With support for more than 40 device protocols, this device management service can help companies leverage the IoT for immediate detection and quicker response. The new release aims to integrate IoT services with the SAP Cloud Platform Streaming Analytics service for faster processing of streaming data.

New data centers are located in Japan and China with full local language support.

SAP Cloud Platform is the agile cloud application and integration solution supporting the extension of digital core applications, including SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, Concur and other SAP apps. With over 1,000 apps built by SAP and over 600 partners on SAP Cloud Platform, SAP customers and partners alike can take advantage of the benefits of the cloud and connectivity to business networks.

“As an early adopter of SAP Cloud Platform, Accenture has developed several innovative applications to maximize the value of our clients’ SAP SuccessFactors solution investment,” said Christophe Mouille, senior managing director and Global SAP practice lead at Accenture. “We are also developing on SAP Cloud Platform through the Accenture Liquid Studio for SAP Solutions, which rapidly prototypes and delivers applications for our clients, using new breakthrough technologies such as machine learning, the Internet of Things and advanced analytics to accelerate their digital transformation. We look forward to continue using SAP Cloud Platform to help our clients innovate and deliver business results at speed.”